Gamification, dark marketing, rewards culture, and color codes
something to bring the edge back
Clayton is touring vintage furniture stores in Amsterdam in birks with the socks, while Oren is breaking down the luxury branding strategies of Amalfi’s beach clubs.
If you’re looking for the retail report on how to get your brand into stores (and grow it from there) you can find that here.
In this week’s newsletter, Oren breaks down consumer action trends that everyone is under-estimating, we launch a new free color tool, go into “dark marketing” tactics and showcase content field notes for creators and brands.
Let’s begin.
Rewards and Gamification in Consumer Culture
There are two themes that I’ve been talking a LOT about with friends that sound simple but have powerful implications for how brands and technology will play into our lives over the next few years I wanted to recap here.
Gamification and rewards - We don’t often think enough about how much our culture has become gamified, and certainly the next generation. Snap streaks gamifying our relationships, Robinhood’s gamification of trading, Duolingo’s streaks, Strava run sharing, getting monetarily rewarded for content performance by TikTok and Youtube, and now prediction markets like Kalshi, Polymarket etc. Betting, rewards and streaks are dominant user behaviors. Sports betting, pump.fun, poly market etc are epidemics amongst younger male consumer, and I often realize many people outside that demographic just have no idea those markets exist.
Related - rewards in particulars are important because it is becoming a customer expectation. In a world of infinite choice from who provides your burrito taxi, to where you bet, to what network you create on, savvy platforms are offering better rewards than the others. If you want to stand out, what are you offering your users?
I was working on a piece of content with Bilt around their new fundraise, and thinking about their rapid ascent among my peer group. They pioneered getting rewards points on rent (and now mortgages, HOAs, student housing) raising the standard of what people can expect to get in return for their dollars on ANY purchase. They became a standard within people I know because the programs/rewards were actually excellent, and very relevant to the lifestyle of young professionals.
In increasingly competitive categories, we’re going to see gamification and rewards increasingly used as a tactic, and we should all be aware of it as consumers and operators.
Hypercolor
We have a new community tool. There was a lot interest in some of my vacation story posts where I posted my color capture workflow I use to pick out color ideas for branding from natural color sources. We’ve talked about lot about “vibe coding” in the past and making quick apps (I also strategically made some partner content ended up the #1 search result on this for TikTok for about half of the last year, as one does), but noted BrandFathers operator Antonio whipped up a free version yall new welcome to try out.
https://color.hyperstudios.us/
Upload any photo, identify the colors, create downloadable graphics like the below.
Dark Marketing
The term “growth hacking” is a relic, notably cringe, but also describes an ethos that mainstream marketing doesnt talk much about that perpetuates in fast-moving, more fringe new businesses. Buying and selling social accounts on escrow sites, harvesting email addresses from website pixel traffic visits, reverse searching factories from customs records… this is just a few of the gray area tactics that marketers use to get an edge… and no one gets trained on. I break a few of these down below for your awareness, and cover 7 in this week’s full length Youtube.
Veo 3 hooks - AI comes to advertising
If you’re not seeing AI video in your IG and TikTok feeds yet, your customers most certainly are. Savvy ad firms are focused right now on hooks with this content, how do you use the first few seconds to show something innately scroll stopping, then transition to more standard content.
Pixel Email Harvesting - How do these brands build such massive lists?
Ever wonder how some brands build massive email lists? Ever feel like you’re measly opt-in rate that same growth would take forever. Tools like Retention.com allow businesses to collect emails from website visitors who never opted in. They're essentially harvesting contact information from anyone who lands on your site.
The Reality Check: This has always made us feel uneasy in concept, seems certainly to be against spam laws, and will lead to a less-engaged email base but it's happening at scale across e-commerce.
Import Yeti - How does everyone have amazing suppliers for their business out the gate?
Want to know who makes your competitor's products? Import Yeti reveals the suppliers behind any brand importing goods to the US. Simply search a company name (you’ll need their legal name, or legal entity they receive with) and you’ll unlock their supply chain, what they received from who/when.
Pro Tip: When you find these hidden manufacturers (most aren't on Alibaba), hire freelancers in those countries via Upwork to make introductions to get a meeting scheduled for you in their native language. This tactic works 80% of the time.
The Cold Outreach Machine - How does every brand seem to get your email?
If you’re managing any type of business line, or business itself, you likely get a never-ending stream of pitches in your inbox, even calls to your phone.
While ZoomInfo was the old standard for getting leads for a price, Apollo is dominating cold outreach with comprehensive contact databases, auto-dialing, AI meeting setup, and integrated email campaigns. It's the complete stack for aggressive lead generation.
I make a full video going through all of these techniques and more that marketers don’t talk about… but many certainly are using. And yes, every week my thumbnails stray further from god’s light.
Content Field Notes
The moment vs the shot content still slaps if the concept goes hard enough.
Cut30 grad Greg Sebell breaks down the multi-hyphenate creative era and why you shouldn’t niche down.
Clothing line debuts are becoming far more unhinged. But man the clothes are bad.
Cut30 grad Ben doing the “ranking 1-10” expert trend that we cannot recommend enough for personal brands.
A fascinating look at American brands and how they show up in Korea.
Too much talk about the Range Rover logo, not enough about their Wimbledon campaign.
Content Feature:
Oren sits down with the 505 Podcast for an hour blitz on every major content and social strategy that matters right now. Straight, unfiltered tactics for brands and creators.
Hyper Reports
Check out our market reports. We spend many hours researching markets, categories, and brands & products within the consumer space so you don’t have to.